1. Field of Invention
The field of the present invention relates to multi-tone transceivers.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a digital multi-tone (DMT) based DSL systems (such as ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+, VDSL1, VDSL2), modems at either end of a telephone line, go through a training phase which determines the data rate that is to be sent over the line in both downstream and upstream directions. In each direction, the transmit part of the modem sends a known reference pattern on the line which is used by the receiver part of the modem at the other end of the line, to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on each of the tones. Based on the SNR of a tone, the constellation size that can be loaded is determined. This bit loading is typically done with some noise margin, say ‘M’ db, such that noise can increase by this noise margin amount of M db, without increasing the bit error rate (BER) beyond the target error rate. The bit table information consisting of the constellation size and the gain on each of the tones is exchanged between the modems and agreed on. The sum of the bits loaded on each tone is the bits per symbol in that direction, indicated by ‘Ls’ in that direction. The modem's throughput in a direction, known as line rate, is calculated by multiplying ‘Ls’ with the symbol rate.
At the end of the initialization, the modems go into “showtime” mode, where the modems start transmitting the user's payload data. The payload data is put into a DSL framing structure which defines a “frame” consisting of user payload data bytes, as well as overhead bytes and error correcting parity bytes (such as Reed-Solomon parity bytes). The overhead bytes are used for exchanging messages for operation and management of the modems. The bytes coming from the framing are sent through an interleaver for improving noise immunity to impulse noise. The interleaver output bytes are then modulated on to the tones as per the bit and gain tables agreed upon during initialization.
A change in bit-loading may also take place during this showtime phase, when for example, noise increases, e.g. due to additional lines coming up in a binder. The DSL standards have defined a procedure known as Seamless Rate Adaptation (SRA) for allowing rate adaptation during showtime. In the SRA method, the modems check the current SNR, and if the noise has changed, a bit loading based on the current SNR is performed, and if the noise has increased, then the line rate can be reduced by the new bit loading, and vice versa. The modems effect this change by the use of overhead bytes to exchange the new bit table information, and then switch to the new bit table, thereby changing the line rate to match the new noise conditions.
SRA is however susceptible to noise increases big enough to corrupt the data bytes since such noise increases also corrupt the overhead bytes containing a SRA message. When the message exchange fails to go through the modems drop the line and start retraining to the new noise conditions. This retraining can take 10 to 30 seconds which is not acceptable for many data types such as video or audio.
What is needed is an improved rate adaptation.